A New Year's Resolution Suggestion For Your Government And All Elected Canadians: Look After Your Own People
January 7, 2004
Dear Prime Minister Martin and Fellow MP's:
As the year 2004 begins, our organization sends you and all elected Canadians this New Year's Resolution suggestion: “Look after your own people”. This may seem self-evident to most of us, but the facts show that a number of elected Canadians do not give their own fellow long-term citizens first consideration in their decisions.
Two events of about a year ago illustrate this point. At former Prime Minister Chretien's riding office in Shawinigan, a number of unemployed 45+ males demonstrated to make the point that they were having serious problems in finding work. Around the same time, Canada's Immigration Minister, Denis Coderre, was telling Canadians that Canada continued to require 250,000 immigrants per year. There was and continues to be a very blatant conflict between the messages in these two incidents.
Most Canadians who are aware of historical immigration levels in this country refer to present immigration levels as The Flood– with all of its Old Testament connotations. Before The Flood began around 1990, the federal government had Health and Welfare Canada conduct a major national study to look at possible changes in size, structure and distribution of Canada's population over the next 30 years and to report on how these changes might affect Canada's social and economic life. One of the points of this study was to look at the possible role of immigration in dealing with the aging population issue. This study involved 200 scholars in a wide range of disciplines from across Canada. Its findings have been repeated many times since.
The study concluded that Canada's population would continue to grow for another 20 years and that immigration has only a short-term impact on our population's age structure. In other words, immigration is a poor tool to deal with an aging population issue. One of the major conclusions of the study ws that increasing the female labour force partcipation rate and increasing the 45+ male labour force participation rate of Canada's own people was statistically superior to the use of immigration in lowering Canada's future dependency ratio. The clear implication of this conclusion was that it is moral for a government to consider the employment needs of its own people first and it is immoral to do the opposite.
There is little doubt that successive federal governments, since the time of that study, have chosen to follow the immoral course. In other words, immigration levels have ignored the federal government's own research findings and have continued to grow. If present policies continue, immigration levels will rise in perpetuity. Close to 2 million Canadians are unemployed. All elected Canadians have to get the message that their own people are not garbage which can be dumped in the nearest landfill. Elected officials cannot rationalize their immorality, irresponsibility and lack of courage by continuing to cheerlead unprecedented immigration levels. Elected officials also cannot hide behind the masquerade of such diversions as equity employment and the fast-tracking of new immigrants' credentials while these elected officials ignore or treat with contempt the employment needs of long-term Canadians. Canada will always have some immigration, but Canada clearly does not need the high numbers it is accepting now. The government of Canada's primary responsibility is to look after its own people.
Take this New Year's Resolution suggestion to heart. Fulfill your moral responsibility to your own people.
Best wishes for 2004,
Dan Murray
Immigration Watch Canada
